JUDO REVIEW: Scottish Judokas shine in Glasgow

England may have topped the final medals table, but there is no doubt the 2014 Commonwealth Games judo tournament belonged to Scotland.

Sarah Clark, the veteran judoka from South Shields who only came north of the border for a few weeks training and ended up staying, delivered a fitting end to her international career as the former European champion added the under-63kgs title to the silver won the last time the martial art was in the Commonwealth Games at Manchester 2002.

Heavyweight Sarah Adlington marked her return from injury by winning the heavyweight division - only to then lose her gold medal in an X-ray machine as she left the venue before getting it back.

Royal Marine Chris Sherrington, who found himself lost in a downward spiral of alcohol abuse following his return home from tour of duty in Iraq, delighted the banks of photographers by donning his green beret and trying to take a bite out of his gold medal after toppling fellow giant Ruan Snyman of South Africa.

There is, though, no doubt of the golden moment which all of Scotland wanted.

Flag bearer Euan Burton claimed victory in the under-100kgs division, having decided to step up two weight categories when returning to competitive action from his role as a coach within the national squad.

"This does not make up for London. I worked my whole life to try to be Olympic champion, and I fell short at both Games I made it to," said Burton, who was inconsolable having lost his opening bout at the Olympics two years ago, before delivering an emotional television interview as he came off the Tatami, a lifetime of dreams gone in a matter of seconds.

"These achievements here are a credit not just to the players, who are the ones who do all of the hard work and without that no-one gets any medals, but the people behind them, the coaches, the physios, the strength-and-conditioning guys, all of the staff at Judo Scotland, they helped to make this week happen - 13 medals out of 14 athletes is a pretty good return."

Patrick Dawson almost made it a clean sweep for the Scots, losing his bronze-medal fight at under-73kgs.

Sally Conway, ranked in the world's top six for under-70kgs, will have been disappointed not being able to take the gold when she was beaten by England's Megan Fletcher, the eventual champion, and had to fight back for bronze.

England, though, also had their own stories.

London Olympians Colin Oates and Ashley McKenzie both lived up to their favourites tags in the lightweights, while Nekoda Davis - a 2016 Olympic hopeful based full-time at the British Judo Centre of Excellence - won gold at under-57kgs, beating Scotland's Stephanie Inglis in the final.

Danny Williams, who went through a drastic week of fasting to make the weight having been a late call-up replacement because of injury, produced the performance of his career to claim gold in under-73kgs, before Camberley training partner Owen Livesey defeated compatriot Tom Reed in the half-middleweight final.

There was, though, no fairytale ending for Burton's wife, Gemma Gibbons, the injury-hit Olympic silver medallist, who lost out to Wales' Natalie Powell in the final of the under-78kgs and could face a battle with the Cardiff youngster to qualify a place on the British squad for Rio.

There will, though, be little time to revel in the achievements of Glasgow as focus quickly turns towards preparations for the World Championships in Russia at the end of August.

He said: "We want to make sure we use Glasgow as a platform to carry that success and give the players that extra drive for them to start winning key matches at Grand Slam and Grand Prix events in order to make sure they are within the remit of the Olympic qualifying criteria for Rio."

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

Belfast Newsletter provides news, events and sport features from the Belfast area. For the best up to date information relating to Belfast and the surrounding areas visit us at Belfast Newsletter regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website Belfast Newsletter requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.